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Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a former Saudi royal insider become dissident, has been tortured, murdered and mutilated inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. He was a Virginia resident.

President Trump made it clear that Khashoggi’s death would not stop the profitable arms dealing between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Nor, one presumes, will it stop the close friendship between the smirking Fascist Jared Kushner and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who “Sixty Minutes” profiled as a hipster who allowed Saudi women to drive.

The blood of thousands of Yemenis, including women and children, is on the hands of the hipster, making him the hippest mass murderer in history.

Jamal Khashoggi was killed for speaking. Journalists are being killed at alarming rates around the world. Our corrupt president’s obsession with journalists at home and “fake news” makes it inevitable that an American journalist will be killed.

If you think if can’t happen here, consider that Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who brought down a sitting president, lived in constant terror during the Watergate period. After all, Nixon discussed surrounding American cities with tanks and soldiers and declaring martial law. Henry Kissinger was calling the shots, he of the democratically elected Chilean government overthrow scheme fame who, on tape, ordered Pinochet dissidents to be thrown from helicopters.

Two private jets loaded with Saudi hitmen, an autopsy specialist and a bone saw landed in Turkey, and were driven to the Saudi consulate. On tape, Khashoggi can be seen walking into the consulate (he needed papers that would allow him and his fiancée to wed). He does not come back out. Two hours later, his car is towed. The Turkish government has said they have audio recordings of Khashoggi being tortured and dismembered (it is rare that a government reveals what we all know, that countries bug their embassies).

According to Bob Woodward’s book “Fear,” Trump is a big fan of right-wing dictators. He is constantly on the lookout for ways to suppress free speech. Today’s plan is to ban protesters from the Washington Mall. Yesterday’s plan was to locate and censor Trump critics on Facebook. Not going to happen, head-in-the-sand Facebook users?

I in no way put myself on the journalist list. A column in the Alton Telegraph doesn’t qualify. Yet: a trusted friend was approached in his church, asked if I was his friend (I had written about him) and told to tell me I had better stop writing what I write. You need to get a gun, the friend told me.

The journalists I mentioned have had to hire security details, arm themselves, purchase attack dogs bred to fight. For whom are they fighting? For whom are they risking their lives? For what? How do they bear our seeming indifference?